Graceland: "Losing love is like a window in your heart."#

Tease: We have WordPress verbs in Drummer, and they work. Only web Drummer for now, not in Electric Drummer yet. #

When I was a kid I used to think how most of the stars of really old movies were dead. How far removed from my existence. I was watching a clip of Pee Wee Herman and realize he was just as dead as Lucille Ball, Raymond Burr, Judy Garland, Jim Nabors, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. For that matter he's just as dead as Ben Franklin.#

Oh that awful feeling when you come up with a term you know is going to catch on and the domain is available. #

I have a local friend who went to my high school so we have an important cultural reference point, and a local friend who was raised a few blocks from where I grew up, another strong cultural reference point. We can converse about many things without explaining because we started from the same place. I didn't know either of these people when I was growing up, just met them in the last few years. Same sort of thing happened at the Berkman reunion. #

This NYT article (no paywall) is a summary of how tech is moving quickly to bring ChatGPT-like functionality to people's content, through email and cloud-based documents. It's remarkable how quickly this is happening, and not surprising because ChatGPT is such a compelling app, and it's doubly-so when applied to our own writing. But so far there's one glaring omission, these bots don't know where my blog is. Who is going to fill that gap, not with an experiment, but with something up to par at least with the way Bard understands Gmail, which is still pretty simple, but I imagine it's only going to get better, quickly. #

The NYT used to have a sports section, now when you click a link in their Sports feed it asks for more money. And they don’t appear to have specific coverage for NY sports teams. They’re the Google of news. We need an EZ-Pass for News to route around their dominance.#

And now would be a great time to put together a group of NY-metro sports bloggers into a nice publication. There's real money in sports in the city.#

We need a Node.js package that lets you add the contents of a file to the ChatGPT database, along with a URL where the content of that file can be found on the web. It has to be that simple. Based on what Google announced yesterday, and what Facebook is likely to announce this week, it's clear that the big tech companies are only going to allow you to access your data if it's stored in their silos. We need something just as powerful and easy that works with content on the open web. #

BTW, I had to try the Bard feature that lets you ask questions about your Gmail. As you might imagine there's some very personal stuff in there. As a matter of policy I do not write about that kind of stuff on my blog, but mama mia it's pretty amazing what it will report on.#

Yesterday the "former president" as he's referred to on TV, or Mr President on NBC, shared a post that said Jewish liberals are destroying America. Let's mark this line clearly. Talk like that is full of alarm for Jewish people, esp those raised by people who survived the last holocaust. If this doesn't stop you in your tracks, then you probably won't notice when they start calling us vermin, restricting our movement, take our property, move us to ghettos and then systematically incinerate us the way you would rid yourself of an infestation. You know the old story about the frog boiling in water. We all are on that path. This was always where Make America Great Again was going, an America with all the Jews dead. That this isn't Story One on every front page and newscast says everything you need to know about how journalism is failing us. #

If anyone from MacArthur or Knight is tuned in, here's an idea. Help us get an EZ-Pass for News going. It's a bootstrap. If there were incentives. If it were seen as a good cause. It could increase the fluidity of news around the country and world by an order of magnitude. That can't help but increase cash flow through news orgs. But more importantly it give us more access to ideas that don't come from the NYT et al. Might be a nice way to boost all the local news orgs being supported by the $500 million fund. #

Textcasting applies the philosophy of podcasting to text. #

links.scripting.com now redirects to the Links tab on Scripting News.#

A screen shot of what links.scripting.com looked like. I like to do this when domains move, when I think of it, so at least the image of the previous site is maintained. #

I'm davew on Pebble which used to be T2. Note the "s" they added after http in the address of my blog. I don't know why they did that. They need to not do that. Thank you.#

BTW, are you seriously telling me "security" couldn't have been added to the web without breaking every single freaking link? #

I'd like to have a chat with the secret unaccountable person who is breaking the web at Google. How about running your ideas past me before you break the web. Would that be okay?#

Today's song: If I was you I'd wanna be me too. #

It seems like HTTP requests these days, generally, don't come with a referer header? It's a shame because if something you wrote is getting a lot of hits you can't tell where they're coming from. I'm sure there's a privacy reason for this. Perhaps if you were clicking a link from a porn site to a tech blog, you might not want the site to know where you came from, esp if the destination site is Facebook? Not sure. I've been noticing this for a long time, but only yesterday took the time to rule out a bug in my code.#

Update: It seems like this change in Chrome in 2020 is at the root of this new behavior. Something that sounds so esoteric is actually removing an important feature of the web, and it got little or no notice.#

Yet another time Google pulled the rug out from under bloggers, acting as the defacto owner of the web. To big tech companies we just don't exist, probably because to news orgs we don't exist either. Not being able to tell where your stuff is being discussed means you can't learn or persuade. Maybe we should have a human network that manages to get links back to the blogger? #

Imagine a ChatGPT-like bug reporting system, where the user reports a bug via chat, which asks follow-up questions to determine if it's a software error, and determines reproducible steps before a developer even sees the report. One of the most frustrating things in the life of a developer who cares about users are vague reports like "It doesn't work, what did I do wrong?" The chatbot has infinite, inhuman patience. #

I'm getting email saying ChatGPT got some data wrong in the movie report I asked for, but that isn't what's interesting. I'm sure they'll fix that stuff. What's impressive is the language I was able to use to specify the query. #

They don't try to report news on NPR. Bending over backwards to treat Republican mockery of legislative processes as legit. I'm sure when they talk about the events they cover privately they tell each other the truth. But not to their listeners. Why bother.#

It's that time of year when I get into MLB, and unfortunately the Mets aren't in the race this year. Probably won't root for anyone, but I really like watching the game this time of year. For now I'm watching the Mets, it's relaxing with absolutely nothing at stake. Except I can't believe they're thinking about not signing Pete Alonso. A homegrown star. The rarest thing these days in NY baseball. #

AI is the revenge of the command line. #

Imagine a DNS utility that you could converse with as you do with ChatGPT.#

There's a lot of power and ownership that comes from having the dominant web browser.#

I use interactive debuggers as programming tools, not in just in place of console.log statements. It's provably faster, and it makes it possible to build bigger machines that do more. The challenge of software development is to factor and factor so you can add another story to the skyscraper that your product has become. Eventually you have to stop building, one mind can't comprehend that much. Better tools makes it possible to build and manage more complex machines. I have no idea what's around the corner in software development when we can rely on cyber-minds to keep track of complexity for us. We'll have to develop new modes of communication between the human and computer brains, and I seriously doubt if it'll involve implants, more likely it'll happen first when we invent new language. And each of us should be able to create our own. At some point we'll realize we aren't even making sounds. It'll have sensors that learn how our bodies change when we have certain ideas. Who knows. But what possibilities! #

I asked ChatGPT to write SQL code that would generate the table of actors and awards I spec'd last week. "Make a table of 15 oscar-winning actors and actresses ranked by number of nominations, also include a column with the names of at most three of the movies they made that won best picture."#

I saw a thread somewhere about why OPML was used as the export format for feed readers. Not sure I've ever written about this. At the time we were finishing up Radio UserLand, in either 2001 or 2002 (there were two big releases). I wanted a way to export the user's feed list so people could use the same list in another reader. This one decision is why there are so many feed readers imho. Because we offered no lock-in as a key feature, everyone else including Google had to do it with their products. Users had the expectation of data portability, so it's in the DNA of feed readers. Maybe we would have dominated the market with Radio if we didn't export the feed list, it was for a while the only feed reader, but more likely Google would have entered and clobbered us, users wouldn't have been able to use both products, or easily move on after Reader shut down. Anyway, why OPML? First, we had it around, it was new, I wanted people to use it, and I also wanted to use the outliner to edit my subscription lists. JSON didn't exist as an option at the time. And using RSS for that seemed confusing and not right. RSS is a syndication format, representing a flow of information, where OPML represents a list that evolves, but each item has permanence. It's static where RSS is dynamic. It's like the difference between a podcast and an album of music. You listen to a podcast once and it's gone, you may listen to an album many times over decades. Fundamentally different kinds of data, with different needs in how they evolve, and thus the format you use to represent it. Yes we could have shoehorned feed lists into RSS, but 20 years later I'm glad we didn't. #

I asked ChatGPT how I used OPML to share lists of feeds. The story it came back with is amazing. I asked for the list in OPML. I opened it in Drummer.#

Noted that WordPress blogs can now peer with Mastodon and other ActivityPub nodes. Suppose I have a WordPress site and my username is scripting. What address would you follow in Mastodon? #

One of the cool things about this blog is that I got to write about these things when they were new, and now that they've been around quite a long time, in tech industry terms, I get to write about them again. #

I have a few virtual servers at Digital Ocean, and two of them are running Caddy, so the sites hosted on these machines are HTTPS not HTTP. Caddy is the best. You install it, configure it and that's it. It takes care of all the michegas with the EFF, makes them completely invisible. Also makes it possible to switch thank goodness, I didn't miss that the EFF built themselves into the new system, not by force exactly, but by default. Heh. They get a lot of free marketing. Anyway, the fact that Caddy exists means that Amazon S3 could offer HTTPS access to everything I store there without me having to do anything but check a box in a dialog somewhere. So why don't they do it, make HTTPS zero cost to implement and maintain. They could even charge extra. It's kind of perfect, they know who I am better than anyone. We could make HTTPS disappear, which imho would be a good thing. #

Google is worse than a monopolist. They deliberately destroy technology because it’s too empowering for users.#

My father liked to say: "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles scream and shout." It's originally from The Caine Mutiny, he must've gotten it when he worked at IBM. He was always interested in new ideas, new ways to approach problems. But you never get a new idea when you're freaking about how you need a new idea now.#

People who pay Twitter $8 per month should get a certain number of API calls included. Don't charge developers for what the users do. #

The idea about people not learning to use computers really resonated with some. Almost no disagreement. I'd add that we now are going to get another shot at conceiving a computer that's a lot easier to use, with the power of AI. Remember the example where I was able to specify what was basically an SQL query in plain though precise English? That can also be applied to the user interface of a computer. Get me the phone number of the contractor I used to install the solar panels a few years ago. I'm sure the data is here on my computer, it might not be organized that way, but in a few months I'll have my own DaveBot who's read everything I've written everywhere and can answer all my questions (and yes, probably the CIA gets to ask questions too, let's hope Trump doesn't get elected, I'm not unaware of the dangers). And I won't have to remember how to build some app I wrote ten years ago. I won't even have to take notes. It's the paradise I never believed in is about to come to me. #

Last week at the reunion I got to spend a lot of time with Doc Searls, which was great. We're both getting old, and one of these times will be the last one, but for now we're both still kicking around ideas and actually doing some of them. One of the things we share is that when we write up an idea on our blog or in a book it's probably because we want to work with others to do that idea. Really pretty much all the time. And it's disheartening and not at all flattering to hear someone thank you for giving them that idea. This is the saddest thing in my life and it keeps happening. An example, I once went to visit Adam Curry in Amsterdam and he showed me an office full of people he hired to do what I had already done. Adam did that over and over. The problem is you can't hire someone to be Doc or me. No matter how many rooms you fill with attractive people. When you try to do our ideas, we've learned, people seem to always miss the heart of it. Anyway someone reading this may someday work with the source of the idea they love to make it reality and I will have done my good deed for the day. #

In the University Teaching Hospital For Tech I'm thinking about, I would teach users how to adjust to a new piece of software before switching to it. Suppose you're going to use a new piece of software to write your blog, something you do every day. Instead of converting to the new software first and diving into production, I would ask you to play with the new editor on the side, on posts that don't matter, maybe even written by ChatGPT, until you're sure it fits your workflow. To surface and report all bugs that are in your way, or find acceptable workarounds. And only when you're satisfied that it works for you, should you consider switching to the new editor for production work. In my experience working with users, they switch too early and then panic when they find the software doesn't work the way they think it should. More generally you have to learn how to work so you don't have to panic, and you can easily back out of the decision if you decide it isn't right. When you're in panic mode you usually only make things worse. If you can afford to put the problem down for a couple of days and come back to it, you'll get to work faster and probably with a better result. The most important thing in working with computers, if you feel like you're panicking, stop.#

We've never taught people how to use computers. There actually is a lot to it. We're going to get another shot with ChatGPT and its cousins. Imagine when the chat interface is what we use to command and connect our software. #

One thing I have to thank Berkman for is my new confidence. What a boost that meeting was. It took me back to a day when there were a dozen people I worked with regularly who were really first rate, and I was able to participate at my peak, that I did something uniquely valuable and was appreciated for it. I feel a million times more confident this week after the homecoming last week. #

2011: "Google seems to have the power to either seriously injure RSS, or perhaps set it free. Not sure which would happen if they radically changed course. I just know that users have made the other RSS reading tools be dependent on it. And that's not a great way to do things. What makes RSS useful is its power to de-centralize. To re-centralize it for a little convenience is to miss out on the variety that's possible.."#

I wrote a long piece earlier today, about teaching hospitals for tech, that in the end I didn't like. I'll try again another time. #

One thing that didn't come up at the Berkman reunion, as far as I know, was the incredible coincidence that at the same time we were booting up academic and political blogging and podcasting out of Berkman on Mass Ave, on the other side of Cambridge St, Mark Zuckerberg and his undergrad pals were booting up what would eventually make them billionaires, aka The Face Book. What if we had met, or known about each other? #

I just tripped over a 2018 rewrite of Developing Better Developers. I remembered writing this, but never could find it. I need to tell Google when I search for site:scripting.com to also include site:this.how. If anything the bits on this.how are more important than the ones on the much larger scripting.com. I could give these instructions, just like this, to ChatGPT and it would understand. It seems to me Google could start allowing us to configure the way Google sees us using natural language like this. Google has really held back the open web, by doing what big companies always do when they achieve dominance. Things ether stagnate or more likely in Google's case, move backwards. #

Something happened on the drive to Boston last week that makes we wary of trusting the FSD feature of my Tesla model Y. I was on the NY State Thruway going north, a few miles south of the exit for I-90E to Boston, in FSD mode, in the right lane, when I see a hundred yards or so ahead a car with flashing lights in the shoulder. Before waiting to see what FSD would do, I signaled a left turn, which is a clever feature that tells the FSD software to switch lanes. It started to do so, then the software must've noticed the car with the flashing lights and inbetween the two lanes it hit the brakes hard, and slowed us down to a dangerous speed, esp if there had been a car behind us. But there was absolutely no danger. The car in the shoulder wasn't even close enough to make a difference if we had remained in the right lane, but we were leaving it. And it tried to stop us in no man's land. Insane. Anyone seeing this behavior would have thought I was drunk. So next time something like that happens if I'm in FSD mode, I'm going to cancel it by turning the steering wheel slightly and taking over fully. I have trouble believing people who let this thing drive without overriding it regularly.#

Bluesky is an invite-only network, but it has an API, and we've added RSS feeds, so I can present to you a view onto Andrew Hickey's Bluesky feed, accessible to everyone. #

Nice to see Thread Writer for Bluesky getting traction. It's a rewrite of thread.center which I wrote for Twitter, which Twitter never noticed before shutting it down. One of these days there will be a platform that really pays attention to what developers create and makes sure users learn about them. Twitter was not that company. Like most tech companies they spent their dev relations money on the wrong things. #

Fixed a bug where every this.how doc would fail trying to load emoji images because it used an "insecure" address. I fixed it so now we can be sure no emoji images are being hacked by a router between AWS and your web browser. Hopefully someone will sleep better because of this. Me, I like fixing bugs so I feel good. 😄#

An idea for an app. Make a list of all the places you've lived, schools went to, restaurants you loved, hated, movies, books, places you've visited. Then you're at a conference or reunion, and the app starts vibrating when you're standing near someone who also uses the app who has something significant and interesting that matches your profile. Take out your phone and it says what it is. You can swipe left or right or ignore it. If you both swipe right, your phones start playing a Peter Gabriel song (the same one) and you know you can have an interesting conversation with this person. #

I have Spectrum cable, only because it’s the only way to get Knicks and Mets games. Otherwise I’d go back to YouTube TV, I like it better. Less money too. And now Disney has disconnected from Spectrum, taking ESPN with, it would a great time for everything to decouple and let’s redo the whole thing. I'm wasting so much money just for two channels and so are a lot of other people.#

BTW, I learned that two of my colleagues from early Berkman are regular readers of this blog, Chris Lydon and Ethan Zuckerman. Maybe they have some ideas how we might bootstrap an online Old School Berkman on the open web, probably using something like blogs I imagine, and giving users choice as to what tools they use to read and write the stuff. Kind of like podcasting but for text. I would totally use an outliner for everything, but it should be wide open for any kind of tool anyone wants to build and/or use. Just an idea. Someday we will use such a system, I hope. Not federated, but small pieces loosely joined.#

I do not keep up with who is or isn't subscribed to nightly email. I deliberately don't want to know. #

BTW, it was pointed out that yesterday's post with my first notes from the BKC 25th reunion failed to say what BKC is. It's a research center that started 25 years ago at Harvard Law School with a charter to do entrepreneurial internet-related projects. #

I asked ChatGPT to summarize my connection with Berkman. #

What a huge loss for the human species that a monstrous company like Facebook controls a wonderful social network like Facebook.#

Sorry still not back up to full speed blogging-wise. Had a great time at the Berkman reunion. But it's so freaking hot here, mid-90s and full humidity. Intermittent internet access. Great to meet all kinds of old friends. The memories are strong. Tomorrow is another travel day, returning to the mountains, and then Murphy-willing, head-down on a new product release.#

They just asked what mistakes did BKC make, and I learned for the first time in Charlie Nesson's talk that development was one of the early values, and when I came here, it was my hope was that we'd connect users and developers and make this a major activity of the university as I described in a series of pieces I wrote. But BKC turned in a different direction, focusing on people who studied the internet, rather than people who made the internet. #

I'm listening to a speaker at the BKC reunion, a man I have great respect for but can't name due to the rules of this conference. He's talking about how to regulate AI, with the assumption that it's a looming catastrophe, without explaining why he feels that way, or why we should. As a reader of this blog you certainly know that I am very optimistic about the future of AI.#

Another busy day with life experiences, will write tomorrow. #

ChatGPT can make tables. #

Back in the 1970s when SQL was new, it was touted as an English-like database language. Now with ChatGPT you really can do database queries in actual English and it understands. Amazing. Whether the info is accurate or not (I suspect it is) is beside the point. It's doing something with language that has not been possible before. Check out this query. "Make a table of 15 oscar-winning actors and actresses ranked by number of nominations, also include a column with the names of at most three of the movies they made that won best picture."#

Yesterday I posted a full-length excerpt of the Google and HTTP piece on Twitter, and was surprised at the positive response. I had posted links to the full article many times, and mostly got flames from programmer priests, Googly trolls, but this time the message got through. It was RT'd 58 times, and got 24K views. Not bad for something most people would consider esoteric, yet is still fundamental the their continued freedom on the unowned open web. #

Just for fun the other day I asked ChatGPT for 150 words on Christopher Lydon and Amanda Palmer, wondering if it would find the connection between them. It wrote a paragraph profile on each, but did not discover that Palmer had written a song about Lydon. Note -- Google's search function totally made the connection. #

Yet another use-case for ChatGPT. I'm using the wpcom package for Node.js to make calls about a user's WordPress account. I want to know what sites the user is following in their reader app. But they don't document the high-level call for that function, which is documented at the REST level. So I ask ChatGPT what to do and it gives me the code I need. In the past I would probably have been able to piece it together with guesswork, trial and error. Might have taken a whole day. Now I have it working while I'm still drinking my morning coffee. BTW, I also had ChatGPT do code review, and it spots an error, and of course I fix it, happily.#

Posted on Masto: I find that ChatGPT is far better than Wikipedia at recounting history I know the truth about. Less subject to human manipulation, imho. When we criticize the machines we should remember what we have to compare them with and we should get our act together. Imagine if the AIs wrote critiques about our accuracy.#

One of those busy days with nothing to say. See you tomorrow! 💥#

I've used plain old HTTP on scripting.com since 1994.#

A couple of weeks ago I found and fixed an error in PagePark that made FeedLand and Drummer fail. The apps were offline until I could restart the server, and that sometimes meant hours of downtime. That no longer happens. But now there's a different problem, sometimes I go to my news page on feedland.org and for a minute or so there's no response. Eventually I give up and try again in a new tab. Same thing. Eventually the problem clears and the server returns to it's normal performance. I'm starting to think about how I might isolate this problem. My theory is that the problem is in the appserver layer, not in FeedLand itself, because when it happens nothing is returned. If it were at a higher level, the lockup would be in the code that gets a timeline or feedlist or whatever, so you would see a menu at the top of the screen. But it's always the news page this happens on, come to think of it. Maybe I should start a thread on this in case other FeedLand users who are also developers (please) might have some ideas.#

It has been pointed out that I could use the OpenAI platform to add commands to my outliner that are based on results of ChatGPT questions. For example, I could say (hypothetically) "add a list for 10 random states under the bar cursor headline" and it would be done. I hope to try that soon. In the meantime if you'd like to do it, the outliner I use is open source, so you can do it, and share it with me and that would make me even happier. 😄#

I spit out demo apps at an incredible rate. I barely remember writing this one. See if you can figure out what it does!#

Patti Smith: I haven't fucked much with the past but I've fucked plenty with the future.#

If you think of yourself as an "open source developer" please ask yourself this question. Are you as committed to freedom for people who use your software as you are to freedom for developers? Not just freedom to modify the source code, that isn't a meaningful power for must people, but freedom to do anything they like with the stuff they create, something your software has to facilitate. #

I use ChatGPT to help me write code. When it gives code examples, I'd like it to use my admittedly uncommon indenting style. Is there a way to do that? #

Why can't I have an editor that I can give ChatGPT commands to. I do it anyway, I just have to copy-paste the result into my editor. Couldn't it save me that step by being integrated, or even better if we had good standards for scriptable apps. We were getting started on that in 1990 when Apple blew it all up, btw. Just sayin.#

I really have to take the time to learn how GitHub co-pilot works. But I still want to use my editor. See the problem?? It's the same problem Slack has. Basically every software product of 2023 adopts the attitude that it is a world unto itself. #

Today's songs: Margaritaville and Come Monday. Yeah it's not the greatest music as people are say, but these are music from a great part of my life. Youth, great friends, love, and a sense of purpose. Like many people my age, these songs have strong emotional value. #

Today's song: She Blinded Me With Science.#

August 27: "Standards that move based on the will of big companies never move compatibly. The interop we have with the web wasn't created by Googles or Mozillas or the EFF. The web was created by accident, when the tech industry of the early 1990s wasn't looking. And of course they've been trying ever since to dismantle the interop gift we got from the accidental network."#

People whose careers began after the advent of the open web probably have no idea what a miracle it is, and imho once it's gone, it'll never happen again. The BigCo's are too entrenched, and have nothing to gain from the freedom and interop it provided. I know, because I was there, and know what a wasteland tech was before the web, and how that changed in an instant when the web caught on. All of a sudden the Bigs couldn't stop us from creating the things we wanted to create. #

States should have to buy insurance against mass shootings, to fund health care for victims and damages to families of those killed. That would give them incentive to control factors that cause mass shootings. No room for the usual bs. #

One of my favorite podcasters, Andrew Hickey, has a Bluesky feed that you can subscribe to in any RSS-compatible feed reader. #

I asked ChatGPT for 10 big themes on my blog.#

The August blog has been archived. #

There's an autumn feel in the air today. A bit cooler, and it isn't very humid. Nice breeze. Funny thing is I so totally looked forward to summer, and it's almost over, and I should feel sad, but right now the changing season actually feels good. Just shows that there's nothing logical or predictable about body chemistry. These feelings come from evolution and natural selection. It's time for the season to change, so our body feeds us chemicals that makes us feel like this is a good thing. #

If you do everything right, posts from my feed passing through FeedLand look pretty darned good.#

Today's song: Old Folks Boogie. "You know you're over the hill when your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill."#

I was once told by a famous and stupid NYT columnist that people my age have trouble learning about new tech, saying that I specifically had not aged well tech-wise. It was just an insult from a very stupid person, but it did hurt. Anyway, now that I'm much older I'd add aging means learning about all kinds of things, like sore and weak backs, knees, hips, memory, hair, lower metabolism, and all kinds of other things. My father as his health declined kept saying old age ain't for sissies, and I could see it in his body and his suffering, and now begin to feel it in my own. My advice -- ignore idiotic young folk, they'll find out soon enough, you don't need to explain it to them.#

I asked ChatGPT for a pep talk, and it provided a very nice one. Well worth the $20 I paid for August. BTW the same NYT columnist said ChatGPT is garbage because it isn't as smart as he is. Heh. 😄#

I was interested in how small claims court works in Ulster County, where I live. So I looked it up on Google reflexively. At the top of the page was the answer from their ChatGPT clone. Here's a screen shot. They stepped into the slot ChatGPT was starting to occupy, and they have the prime real estate. Note the word reflexively in the narrative above. I would perhaps have taken the question to ChatGPT if I cared enough and if it didn't require current info, but it's an extra two steps. But I went to Google first, still. #

A story I asked ChatGPT to write about the 1962 Mets. I gave it the basic themes, and a few seconds later, I had the story. It's a new kind of writing, and it's fun, and as a developer my tests can be more entertaining. If you're a programmer you know what I mean. #

I've become interested in viewing WordPress in a different way, not as just a blogging system, or CMS, rather as a back-end for a twitter-like system, or my idea of what a twitter-like system should be. Rather than staying on the sidelines, as I have for the last 17 years or so, going right for the middle. I like WordPress because there's wordpress.com which is huge, millions of users and now a 100-year plan (or at least the idea of having one), and thousands of functioning clones that interop nicely. Does this sound familiar? And their devs are pretty friendly and open-minded, I've found. #

What if this isn't your body?#

We're having a reunion at Berkman on September 7th and 8th in Cambridge and of course I'm going. Just reviewed the schedule where there were several references to the term "unconference." I think we should talk about how good ideas are usurped or erased. The term was actually coined at Berkman, to describe the format we used for the second day of the first BloggerCon in 2003 by one of our participants, Lenn Pryor, who was at Microsoft at the time. The term was eventually taken over for a imho much less interesting conference format, one where the sessions are chosen in real time at the event, but the format of the sessions is the same one used by non-un-conferences. In our version the hallways are empty, in the other format, well it's business as usual, the interesting stuff happens outside the meeting room. Maybe a university could help make sure that true innovation is rewarded? Something perhaps to discuss at our reunion. I tried to write this comment on the website, but they only allow 280 characters. Anyway here's a Google search for the term unconference on my blog. And a Google Trends search.#

I did a little work on the wordpress.com identity package. It can now display a 3-column list of all your WordPress sites. #

A friend said I should check out a new movie on Netflix entitled You Are So Not Going to my Bat Mitzvah. She said I'd like it because the rabbi is played by my favorite SNL performer, Sarah Sherman. I watched it and highly recommend. It's not a great movie but it is amazing for me, a 3/4 Jewish boy from Queens, son of holocaust survivors, and I found out from this movie someone who is more uncomfortable with being Jewish than I previously understood. Everything about this movie is Jewish. The same way Atlanta or Insecure are thoroughly black. The teenagers in the movie are 100 percent comfortable with being Jewish. I don't think there ever has been a movie that approached being Jewish so naturally without any sense that they have to explain themselves. And I kept having the thought -- Why Not? -- as my discomfort came up and then faded out -- why shouldn't there be movies that share modern Jewish culture in America using comedy, without being embarrassed by it? To me this is proof that antisemitism is strong inside me, and I don't understand how it got there. If Blacks have the same thing about their race, they have used culture to help dismantle it. I watch their shows, why shouldn't I also watch a show about my own people, and accept that we have a right to love ourselves as much as anyone else does? So to me, YASNGTMBM was amazing, and did something huge. And btw, the girls who play the lead roles are incredibly sweet and cute, and I expect we'll see more from them. And yes, Sarah Sherman, as the rabbi was wonderful too. #

Google did something I expect more tech companies will do, they use AI to help people figure out how to use their software. For example, they changed the way downloads work in Chrome. It used to be that when you clicked a download link, a tab would open at the bottom of the window, but now it's been hidden behind a menu at the top of the window. How would I know that? So I kept clicking the download link, all the while starting another download of the file. Finally I looked in the Downloads folder on my Mac, and saw five downloads of the same file, creeping along slowly, because they were all competing with each other, slowing each other down. So I went to the Google search engine and asked about downloading from Chrome, and immediately it gave me the answer. This is new, it's the result of having turned on Google's new AI for search. It showed me where I had to go to cancel the downloads, and I did. Problem solved. I still hate Google for what they're doing to the open web, but I know how to separate the good from the evil. #